The Beginning

Soo its been a few days of exploring the lovely city of London.  On my flight over I sat with two fun younger individuals from around the London and we had a fun time chatting and laughing.  Things that always seem to happen to me; casually chatting turns into intimate life details sharing.  On this particular flight I learned that the girl sitting next to me who was visiting Atlanta with her sister had gotten into a relationship with a married man, and gotten his name tattooed on her body, and had come up with an explanation for why she got it to tell her boyfriend in London.  Like I said it got real personal on that flight.  Really though, im not kidding things like this always seem to happen to me.

Anyways, made it here no problem, took an express bus from Gatwick airport to Heathrow to meet Angie once her plane made it in.  I was transporting my backpack for 5 weeks of travel, plus a massive suitcase for 3 months of studying abroad in cold weather, plus a carry on bag.  Wish someone could of snapped a photo of that.


We have been staying with one of the girls from Bartlesville who was in Angie's small group through klife.  Amanda is here with an international missions organization for 6 months and the first day we went sight seeing with her and her friend Natalie.  They have been really great and helpful to us!  Let me just say, my ethnic food loving heart was made for all the London has to offer.  We have had Turkish, Thai, Portuguese, and obviously proper British pub food all in the past 3 days.  Its been so great!!

Yesterday on our first full day in the city, Angie and I explored on our own.  We went to Central London and hit up all the major sites, spent a couple hours having lunch in Green Park and catching up on the life the past month.  We went to the national gallery to see the Van Gogh paintings which i loved so much.  We spent the day exploring and taking in the city which is huge but so diverse and vibrant!  We spent a lot of time near tower bridge at the wharf area, which was really nice.  The streets had fun markets, and stone streets with great places to sit and people watch.  There was this awesome outdoor photography exhibit by this man who spent 7 years going all over the world capturing different cultural experiences that people go through in growing up that are significant to their ethnic, religious, racial, and cultural heritage.  The photos were made into a book and then the exhibit had certain ones on huge canvases throughout this area that we walked through!  So glad we found it!

Today was my favorite day thus far,  we got up and ready early and made our way to the underground and took the tube to Notting Hill.  I tell you what, I have found my place in London.  Its sooo quaint and adorable and has a completely different feeling than central London.  We went to Portobello Market, which was sooooo good.  I am a sucker for markets.  Ang recognized a famous bakery that has a cookbook she had seen in the states called The Hummingbird Bakery so we stopped in and got a piece of cake to eat on a stoop outside the market.  We really loved walking all over through the market and stopping in really cool antique and specialty shops.  Notting Hill is close to Kensington Palace and gardens so we decided to have another picnic lunch and we went to this awesome shop that is owned by a farm in Kent and who bring all of their produce, juices, cheese, etc in from where its freshly made on the farm.  We got a huge bottle of their signature apple juice which I proceeded to carry around in my bag the entire rest of the day because I wanted to keep the bottle, but it probably just looked to people like I was an alcoholic carrying around a wine bottle. classy.  After a leisurely afternoon in the park we went to an area of the city called Camden Town.  Its another market area that was super interesting.  And by interesting I mean it was really just touristy and cheesy central.  lots of real strange stuff.  We had a man approach in a very serious manner and inform us of the overwhelming deaths caused by diarrhea in the world.  I just looked at him really confused and Angie just decided to say thank you and walk away.  Ahh it was funny.

 Our night was so great! We went to see Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theater in central London.  We had about the worst seats in the house but it was totally worth it!! Such a great experience.  We sat next to this super interesting man who has lived in 13 countries and currently lives in Zurich Switzerland and has a home in Miami.  He is currently waiting for his first book to be published and just finished an engineering deal with Mercedes Benz and the Canadian government.  Ang decided to jokingly ask the man if he needed us as employees.  Needless to say no information was exchanged.

Its been such a blast, so glad we are getting to have this fun time together! 

One more day in London.  Next stop: Edinburgh, Scotland.